The title is an all-purpose word meaning atomic doom, and this is an English science-fiction novel which is an utter fizzle. Some time in the near future, John Brunt is deliberately put to death for over twelve hours so that he can be brought back to report on the Otherworld. This is a timeless place in the future where a depersonalized population is asexual, lives on pills and plastic food. And he is called back to life in time to abort the coming holocaust... Mr. Lymington's writing is itself plastic and his dialogue could use some pills.... cyanide pills.